SUMMARY: There are a lot of incredible street artists out there doing amazing things. Their work isn’t just visually interesting – it’s often insightful and inspiring. There’s always a story behind each piece; great art will force you to think and look at the world differently, and maybe even question your own beliefs.

Looking back, I really enjoyed the PSFK Conference it was my 1st time). My only suggestion to improve the event was that there were so many terrific, interesting people and a limited amount of time to meet them. For the next conference I’d love PSFK to facilitate some kind of icebreaker so that we could get to know more of the attendees.

Simon: It’s a journey, not a destination. It’s about buying intelligently. Blue jeans are a perfect example of sustainable design – they actually get better with age as you wash them (What if we could translate this concept to every product?)

Summary:Sustainability is really about reversing the trend of over- and hyper-consumption that has been a big part of this generation’s habits. This panel reminded me of something Thomas L. Friedman said on TV the other day about the Green movement.

He was asked when we would know that going Green has been successful.

His answer was that there will be no more “green” cars, “green” houses, or “green anything. A car will be a car and a house will just be a house. We won’t know the difference anymore when there’s nothing to differentiate against.

This was one of the best talks of the day. Kevin says that we’re heading towards a world where objects have online and offline entities. The lines are blurred.

He uses the cell phone as an example. Traditionally, phones were used for PEOPLE to call other people. Nowadays, the phone is still connecting us with the rest of the world, but, more importantly, the other rest of the world.

Here’s a few examples of using the online world to improve what’s going on in the offline world.

Nike + “You are in an active communication relationship with your sneakers.”

Kogi Taco Truck This Korean BBQ on wheels is famous for updating patrons on its location using Twitter

Sharkrunners combines an online game with real life GPS tracked sharks. Events unfold in real time. You get an email or a text when you have reached an actual shark!

Celestine was a terrific speaker, but there was so much info on her slides it was difficult to take adequate notes (I hope she will eventually post her slides online). She said that this was a talk about race & representation – NOT about racism (important distinction).

She went on to talk about the cultural/ethnic misrepresentation and exclusion of minorities from video games & virtual worlds. Gaming is mirrored by white culture when it’s in fact minorities that dominate the gaming market.

SUMMARY: Celestine points out that embracing the multicultural demographic provides a highly untapped market for marketers.

BREAK: Death of Ownership

One of the predominant themes of the PSFK Conference has to do with consumerism and consumption. There’s a trend of people not just decreasing their purchases, but actually OWNING less stuff. Take a look at the following examples:

We’ re moving from a society that is used to accumulating things to a society that’s rejecting over-consumption and embracing simplicity:

“You buy furniture. You tell yourself this is the last sofa I will ever need in my life. Buy the sofa, then for a couple of years you’re satisfied that no matter what goes wrong, at least you’ve got your sofa issue handled. Then the right set of dishes. Then the perfect bed. The drapes. The rug. Then you’re trapped in your lovely nest, and the thingsyou used to own, now they ownyou.”

— Fight Club

As I write this I’m thinking about another movie I saw the other night that represents these ideas perfectly, “Into The Wild.” Check it out.

There’s a number of flaws with the current Healthcare model. According to iamweather.com,

“Both Help Remedies and HelloHealth have identified the shortcomings of a medical system that has placed the continued success of the medical business machine ahead of the care of patients. Medications are developed to satisfy marketing departments and product schedules and don’t have any connection to actually making you feel better.”

One of the 1st statistics the panel pointed out was that we’ve doubled our life expectancy since 1900, but its flattened over the past several years.It costs $10,000 to treat asthma, but $3,000 to cure it

The current customers of Doctors aren’t the patients – it’s the Insurance companies that pay Doctors

The Insurance companies end up increasing the Doctors’ overhead (and raising our costs)

HELP REMEDIES:

Richard said he launched Help Remedies to simplify medication from ingredients to packaging.

He also said that we need to get innovation around the Doctor/Patient relationship instead of around who can sell the cheapest insurance

Rich said we should check out the Yellow Tail wine case study to get a better idea of how Help Remedies has structured their marketing and their business (Yellow Tail took a category that was confusing to most people – wine – and simplified it in a way that made people comfortable purchasing it).

SUMMARY: The main idea here is that the Healthcare industry (along with music, newspaper, auto, etc.) has been operating on an outdated business model for far too long. It’s time to get back to basics. Life is complicated enough – healthcare should be simple.

BREAK: Open Source Education

We were introduced to some interesting things going on in the world of education, including:

One of the things Graham emphasized was bringing back repairability. We live in a society that has, for several years now, bought and purged. It looks like the new trend is Unconsumption. Dave Armano just had an interesting post on Marketing in A Post-Consumer Era.

“Small is sexy” – this applies to everything from cars, houses, and products. Generally, the bigger something is, the larger its footprint

From ZipCars to Heliostats, there are a number of products out there that can make us all more eco-friendly

Green Power is one of the quickest ways to reduce your carbon footprint

BREAK: Informed Choices

The 1st talk was followed by a break that pointed us to some useful websites:

The main idea we can take from this panel is that there’s a lot of things people are doing in the world to move the green movement forward without forcing us to somehow lower our standard of living. People can effectively embrace technology and commonsense living to improve their lives and the environment.

If you enjoyed this post, feel free to comment or re-tweet it. Oh yeah, and if you’re looking for a Junior Planner or Strategist in NYC (or know someone who is) – email me at DennisDemori [at] Gmail [dot] com.